While Arthur Miller continues to clog repertory schedules with floods of Death of a Salesman and voluminous numbers of A View From the Bridge, it remains a mystery why there should be such a paucity of The Price - an elegantly tooled miniature from 1968 which articulates Miller's favourite themes more lucidly and pointedly than its baggier, better-known big brothers - and provided the author with his last bona fide Broadway hit.
If All My Sons, Death of a Salesman and View From the Bridge are Miller's great Depression symphonies, The Price is a string quartet on a familiar theme. Like its predecessors, the play presents a domestic catastrophe of seismic proportions, the author homing in on the most vulnerable point on the familial fault-line - in this case the reunion of two brothers of widely divergent fortunes who have not spoken in 16 years. Over the course of two coruscating hours of tersely plotted drama we find out why.
Walter, a hotshot surgeon, and Victor, a flatfooted cop, have found themselves face-to-face in their deceased father's junk hoard, where an antiquated antiques dealer with an agile mind and operatic phlegm has wheezed up the stairs to cast an eye over the "foyniture". His assurance that it is unwise to get emotional about these things is a sure cue that every item will begin to throb with significance.
Special mention should be made of the dead man's armchair, which takes the honours for best supporting role by a piece of furniture. Miller's theme is the swiftness with which nostalgia can curdle into recrimination; and while two equally initially promising young men were rewarded with sharply contrasting careers, this old, vacated armchair represents the hole at the centre of both their lives.
As the smart, neurotic surgeon Walter, John Guerrasio wears worldly success with transparent anguish, while Fred Ridgeway's vanquished Victor carries a martyrdom complex around with him like a stack of pointless NYPD paperwork. Lynne Verrall is touching as a disappointed wife who wanted to marry a scientist but found a cop to be her lot. As the old dealer Solomon, Warren Katz's wily patter strikes a neat balance between unscrupulousness and inscrutability.
Roxana Silbert's perfectly-pitched production makes a strong case for one of Miller's quieter moments being also one of his most powerful. Now who is going to be brave enough to restore The Archbishop's Ceiling?
Until March 24. Box office: 01204 520661.
